xdiff: guard against negative context lengths

The xdemitconf_t fields ctxlen and interhunkctxlen are typed as long (signed), but negative values are not meaningful for context line counts. Unlike the diff_options fields changed in the previous two commits, these cannot be converted to unsigned because the xdiff arithmetic relies on signed subtraction: s1 = XDL_MAX(xch->i1 - xecfg->ctxlen, 0); If ctxlen were unsigned long, the signed operand would be implicitly converted to unsigned, and the subtraction would wrap to a large positive value when i1 < ctxlen, defeating the XDL_MAX clamp. The signed type is required for correct context-window calculations. The previous two commits reject negative values at the parse layer for --inter-hunk-context and -U/--unified, so negative values should no longer reach xdiff in normal use. Add BUG() guards at the top of xdl_get_hunk() as defense in depth to catch programming errors in current or future callers that bypass option parsing. xdl_get_hunk() is called by both xdl_emit_diff() and xdl_call_hunk_func(), so a single guard covers all xdiff consumers. Signed-off-by: Michael Montalbo <mmontalbo@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

Michael Montalbo committed May 12, 2026 at 18:10 UTC 4517e4ca104ca93b51b4acf4d2c62e9325bbb623
1 file changed +12 -4
xdiff/xemit.c
+12 -4
@@ -46,12 +46,20 @@ static long saturating_add(long a, long b)
46 xdchange_t *xdl_get_hunk(xdchange_t **xscr, xdemitconf_t const *xecfg)
47 {
48 xdchange_t *xch, *xchp, *lxch;
49 - long max_common = saturating_add(saturating_add(xecfg->ctxlen,
50 - xecfg->ctxlen),
51 - xecfg->interhunkctxlen);
52 - long max_ignorable = xecfg->ctxlen;
49 + long max_common;
50 + long max_ignorable;
51 long ignored = 0; /* number of ignored blank lines */
52
53 + if (xecfg->ctxlen < 0)
54 + BUG("negative context length: %ld", xecfg->ctxlen);
55 + if (xecfg->interhunkctxlen < 0)
56 + BUG("negative inter-hunk context length: %ld", xecfg->interhunkctxlen);
57 +
58 + max_common = saturating_add(saturating_add(xecfg->ctxlen,
59 + xecfg->ctxlen),
60 + xecfg->interhunkctxlen);
61 + max_ignorable = xecfg->ctxlen;
62 +
63 /* remove ignorable changes that are too far before other changes */
64 for (xchp = *xscr; xchp && xchp->ignore; xchp = xchp->next) {
65 xch = xchp->next;